Let’s twist again: A chaotic first effort laced with surreal shades of Philip K. Dick and other unusual suspects.
A woman kidnapped by invaders dreams of angels, demons, and more otherworldly creatures.
Debut novelist Rodriguez unloads a truckload of nightmares in a baker’s dozen worth of stories, enveloped in a weird, circular narrative. When Betty Hill is abducted by little gray men, she’s sure she’s gone around the bend and will wake up back in the 1960s. To her horror, she learns that they’re really hyperevolved humans who left Earth to travel through space and time. Unfortunately, her recruitment as savior of the human race opens her up to all sorts of alternative stories playing out across dimensions and, as it turns out, in her mind. Leaning mostly into science fiction, questions of faith, and the nature of humanity, the stories that spin out in Betty’s mind are shocking, imaginative, and messy. Many deal with societal conflicts, ranging from sexuality and identity in the opener, “Gender Reveal,” to a creepy caste system for teens in “Five Hives.” You wouldn’t go amiss thinking you’re watching TV under the influence via several stories about cops where past and future police officers tackle everything from the horror of confronting human evil in “Crazy Shark” to takes on racism and authoritarianism in “Sunday Funday” and even a shot at Minority Report in “RCPD: Reincarnation Pre-Crime Division.” Most of the stories lean pretty dystopian, but the heightened absurdity provides a welcome break in the tension. “Untitled YouTube Commercial” is one of these throwaway gems, satirizing web grifters and hustle culture, while “The Council” uses biblical and epistolatory tradition to Behind the Music the Bible. After a grand tour of fantasized futures, Rodriguez eventually brings us back around to Mrs. Betty Hill—yes, that Betty Hill, for you alien abduction truthers—and closes the circle with one more reveal.
Let’s twist again: A chaotic first effort laced with surreal shades of Philip K. Dick and other unusual suspects.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781963511215
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Flare Books/Catalyst Press
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2025
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.
Atwood goes back to Gilead.
The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), consistently regarded as a masterpiece of 20th-century literature, has gained new attention in recent years with the success of the Hulu series as well as fresh appreciation from readers who feel like this story has new relevance in America’s current political climate. Atwood herself has spoken about how news headlines have made her dystopian fiction seem eerily plausible, and it’s not difficult to imagine her wanting to revisit Gilead as the TV show has sped past where her narrative ended. Like the novel that preceded it, this sequel is presented as found documents—first-person accounts of life inside a misogynistic theocracy from three informants. There is Agnes Jemima, a girl who rejects the marriage her family arranges for her but still has faith in God and Gilead. There’s Daisy, who learns on her 16th birthday that her whole life has been a lie. And there's Aunt Lydia, the woman responsible for turning women into Handmaids. This approach gives readers insight into different aspects of life inside and outside Gilead, but it also leads to a book that sometimes feels overstuffed. The Handmaid’s Tale combined exquisite lyricism with a powerful sense of urgency, as if a thoughtful, perceptive woman was racing against time to give witness to her experience. That narrator hinted at more than she said; Atwood seemed to trust readers to fill in the gaps. This dynamic created an atmosphere of intimacy. However curious we might be about Gilead and the resistance operating outside that country, what we learn here is that what Atwood left unsaid in the first novel generated more horror and outrage than explicit detail can. And the more we get to know Agnes, Daisy, and Aunt Lydia, the less convincing they become. It’s hard, of course, to compete with a beloved classic, so maybe the best way to read this new book is to forget about The Handmaid’s Tale and enjoy it as an artful feminist thriller.
Suspenseful, full of incident, and not obviously necessary.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-385-54378-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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